San Juan Expedition

Their difficult passage through the deep canyons of the Colorado River represents the ingenuity and determination needed during the country's era of western exploration and settlement.

In the fall of 1879 volunteers for the expedition assembled their wagons, supplies, and livestock at a spring at the head of Fortymile Gulch, just south of the deep canyons of the Escalante River Basin, and just north of the cliffs of the Kaiparowits Plateau.

Naming it Hole-in-the-Rock, they proceeded to spend several months widening it for the passage of wagons, and building anchor points and tracks to assist with the descent.

People and livestock climbed down the crevice, and wagons descended with brakes locked and as many as 10-20 men holding ropes to slow the descent.

A member of the expedition, Kumen Jones, wrote:[1] After about six weeks work and waiting for powder, etc., a start was made to move the wagons down the hole.

After traveling further east, and just twenty miles from their original goal, the exhausted expedition halted in April 1880 and founded the community of Bluff.

The book The Undaunted is a historical novel by Gerald N. Lund which tells the story of the expedition, drawing on diaries and other accounts, and centering on one fictional family amongst real persons on the trip.